The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Author:Tsitsi Dangarembga [Tsitsi Dangarembga]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571368150
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-03-14T22:00:00+00:00

9

On Saturdays Miss Plato prowled, to peer in and out of all the cupboards on St Ignatius’ floor in order to predict our eventual success as graduands of the Young Ladies’ College. Her predictions were based on orderliness and neatness, criteria that, on those Saturdays in particular, caused pandemonium in the last dormitory on St Ignatius’ corridor.

Order and neatness were attributes naturally in short supply in the junior dormitories. Bougainvillea was now housed in St Agatha’s, the middle school wing that looked over the swimming pool. But while she lived on the junior floor, she spoke for us all when she defined the character of tidiness. ‘Order,’ declared Bougainvillea, ‘belongs to a lower class of mind. In fact, a lack of randomness denotes an abysmal spirit.’ There was great admiration along the corridor for the girl’s turn of phrase, the jut of her chin when she made the comment. In spite of the admiration though, no one, besides Bougainvillea herself, ever demonstrated that theory to Miss Plato. Indeed, apart from Bougainvillea, not a soul on the junior corridor was foolish enough to neglect a jersey, a towel or a book upon her bed when she went off to the classrooms. And at the weekends we were doubly diligent, intensely more painstaking. For during her weekly inspections Miss Plato did not merely pounce on obvious offenders. She spent several minutes in the room, her head half hidden in the cupboards, examining every recess. At these times the matron proceeded to scour every nook and cranny of the dormitory. One after another, wardrobe doors were pulled open, her eyelids pressed together like callipers over her small grey eyes. Shelf by shelf, she conducted her scrutiny, to see whether a blouse protruded over the item of clothing upon which it was folded; and if the blouse was the first item placed on the shelf, Miss Plato inspected to see if the cloth did not lap over the woodwork.

Now, as the rooms in the junior corridor were meant for four but because the nuns’ great favour towards us resulted in us being six, there was even more tension than usual on Saturdays in our dormitory. This came about as, with four cupboards and six people, four girls must of necessity share two cupboards. The seniors were allocated their own storage space, while sharing was left to middle schoolers and juniors. So Cynthia shared a cupboard with Irene. As the two next youngest, I was required to share a space with Ntombi.

Miss Plato patrolled without notice on Saturdays. Carrying her large brass bell into the fourteen rooms she inspected each week would inhibit the matron’s execution of her duties. Which hand would then run down shelves of gym culottes and blouses, arranged as inconsistently as foreign participles? Besides, the bell was too vital to the smooth-running of the school to relinquish, once she was inside a dormitory and conducting an examination, within the reach of pupils. If Bougainvillea got her fingers round that bell, there would not be any saving of any people’s faces, as Miss Plato herself was acutely aware of.

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